Sam Rimmer sat looking at her as if in a quandary, gently rubbing his hair, which shone again in the sun.
“Well, it’s a pity but you wanted some,” said he, slowly. “We’ve gone and been and pervided a shop full o’ meat to-day, and it’ll be a dead loss on the master. The Clement-Pells don’t want none, you see: and they took a’most as much as all the rest o’ the gentlefolks put together. There’s summat up there.”
“Summat up where?” snapped Molly.
“At the Clement-Pells’. The talk is, that they’ve busted-up, and be all gone off in consekence.”
“Why, what d’ye mean?” cried Molly. “Gone off where? Busted-up from what?”
But, before Perkins’s boy could answer, the Pater, walking about the path in his straw hat and light thin summer coat, came on the scene. He had caught the words.
“What’s that you are saying about the Clement-Pells, Sam Rimmer?”
Sam Rimmer touched his hair, and explained. Upon going to Parrifer Hall for orders, he had found it all sixes-and-sevens; some of the servants gone, the rest going. They told him their master had bursted-up, and was gone away since Sunday morning; and the family since Monday morning. And his master, Perkins, would have all the meat left on his hands that he had killed on purpose for the Clement-Pells.
You should have seen the Squire’s amazed face. At first he did not know how to take the words, and stared at Sam Rimmer without speaking.
“All the Banks has went and busted-up too,” said Sam. “They be a-saying, sir, as how there won’t be nothing for nobody.”